Michael Hone Court Case

Michael Hone Court Case

If you’ve searched for ‘Michael Hone court case’ you’ve no doubt fallen foul of a collapsed property development in Spain, most likely in relation to the Royal Marbella Group.

Michael Hone is a northern Irish property sales agent who widely sold property for the Royal Marbella Group, even at a time when it was very obvious that the group could not meet its financial obligations. Subsequently, many clients took either Michael Hone, Royal Marbella Group – or both in some cases – to court in order to seek retribution for their financial losses.

Many of the court cases against both entities have been successful and, to date, we’re pretty sure nobody has every been refunded anything by either entity. Royal Marbella Group is now defunct (it is now DUJA Group, see below) and Michael Hone’s whereabouts are not widely known.

If you’ve engaged in a Michael Hone court case you’ll no doubt be wondering if you’re ever going to be able to recover your funds. The good news is that just because you’ve taken a court case against Michael Hone or Royal Marbella Group, this does not preclude you from taking a case against bankers for the group. In most, but not all, cases this entity is Spanish financial giant Abanca. Whether or not you have taken action against Michael Hone, Mark Cordner, Royal Marbella Group or DUJA Group doesn’t matter, you can still make a claim against the bank into which your funds were transferred.

Recovering Payments to Royal Marbella Group has been a contentious issue since their projects ceased development almost a decade ago. This followed the collapse of the DUJA Group (Desarrollos Urbanísticos Jiménez Álvarez, Sociedad Limitada or DUJA S.L) which had previously been known as the Royal Marbella Group.

One of the most famous incomplete developments sold by Michael Hone and Royal Marbella Group was Royal Vinedos del Mar (If you wish to find out more about this project then please visit our post on recovering payments made to Royal Vinedos del Mar). This was a proposed Royal Marbella development to be built by the now defunct Grupo Labaro. It was scheduled to be built on a parcel of land beside the La Duquesa Golf and Country Club in Manilva. This is right in the centre of one of Spain’s Costa del Sol’s premier ‘lifestyle’ destinations. The development, however, was never built. In fact, much of it was never even started. As you can see from the picture attached, it was left as a building site.

The collapse of the proposed development left an awful lot of people significantly out of pocket. Downpayments for upmarket property on the development were significant. It was proposed as a high-end, luxury apartment and villa development in one of the Costa del Sol’s upmarket resort locations. It ended up costing investors hundreds of thousands of Euros and, in some cases, millions.

Sir Geoff Hurst famously took a Royal Marbella court case in Spain as well as a Michael Hone court case (along with a court case against UK agent, Mark Cordner) in the UK. He, along with 7 others, won their cases but has not, to this day, received any money from taking that legal route to payment recovery. We are currently in the process of pursuing the Spanish banks involved for a full repayment for Mr. Hurst along with all those who were involved in these cases with him.

There have been a number of successful judgements, mainly but not all against Abanca. This is the bank into which most funds were lodged for this development. They are being refunded under Spain’s Ley 57/68. (You can find out all about this Spanish law in our post ‘What is Ley 57/68‘). You can also read sample information here on one of our successful judgements against Corporación Bancaria, Sociedad Anónima. This is just one such judgement, we have had many more since this time, which have resulted in the repayment of the deposited funds plus interest to the clients in question.

If you have paid money to either Royal Marbella or Michael Hone for a property that was subsequently not built you are entitled to make this same claim to have your payments refunded to you. Because there is now precedent, and because our office has been successful in taking a large number of cases against the bank in question, we are in an unprecedented position to recover your investment.